Google+ has evolved a lot in a short time but apparently it is far behind the popularity and user base as that of Facebook and Twitter. Google+ recently introduced the much awaited ‘Pages’ for brands and businesses, so that anyone can connect virtually with their favorite brands or companies. The official Gmail page on Google Plus recently made a post notifying users about the unknown Chat emoticons in Google+ chat.

There are over 15 funny emoticons that you can use while chatting to smartly express your humour, joy, love or angriness. The best and cool one is the emoticon of the very popular Nyan Cat, pinned with a cute animation. Some of the emoticons like Nyan cat, moustache, cat and bumblebee will show up perfectly in Google+ chat box only, while the rest ones appear fine in Gmail chat. Check the list below:

~=[,,_,,]:3 (Nyan Cat)

:{ (mustache)

:3 (cat)
:) (pig)
|) (monkey)
V.v.V (crab)
-<@%(bumblebee)
+/’\ (cowbell)
[:|] (robot)
}:-) (devil)
\m/ (rock out)
<3 (heart)
</3 (broken heart)
>.< (wince)
or :* (kiss)

Do tell what’s your favorite chat emoticon or share any creative ones below.

Source: +Gmail (Google+)

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The Gmail iOS app was launched 2 weeks back but was quickly pulled from the App store as it was buggy. Fortunately, the notifications bug has now been fixed and the app is back once again, available for download for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 4.0 or later. Just get the app to enjoy official Gmail experience on your idevice!

According to the Official Gmail blog:

In the short time the app was public we received a lot of helpful feedback and feature requests. This included requests for everything from bigger features like multiple account support to customizations like improved notifications and mobile specific signatures.

We’re just getting started with the Gmail app for iOS and will be iterating rapidly to bring you more features, including all the ones listed above plus many more. Based on your comments we have already improved our handling of image HTML messages – they are now sized to fit to the screen and you can pinch to zoom in.

Key Features:

• Receive notification badges for new messages
• Read your mail with threaded conversations
• Organize your mail by archiving, labelling, starring, deleting, and reporting spam
• Keep track of important messages with priority inbox
• Auto-complete contact names as you type
• Send and receive attachments
• Search through all your mail

Note: If you already have the Gmail app 1.0.1 released on 2 Nov, you will need to uninstall or log out of the old app prior to installing the new app.

Download Gmail for iOS [iTunes link]

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Few months back, Gmail introduced several new inbox styles with the purpose to let users manage their email in the best preferred way. The new inbox style tab has now been turned on for almost everyone, and is also available on the new Gmail look. This new style adds 5 different Inbox tabs at the top of your inbox. Indicated as – “Try on a new inbox: Classic, Important first, Unread first, Starred first, Priority Inbox”.

If you’ve already saw this new inbox style then you must have noticed that the ‘Inbox-style tabs toolbar’ disappears from your Gmail interface after a while. Well that’s not a magic but smarty Gmail that removes those tabs bar, after watching you settled on a particular favorite style for about a week. However, one can easily change the inbox style from the drop-down menu next to the Inbox label or from Settings (Inbox).

Fortunately, there is a way to easily restore the Inbox tabs toolbar in Gmail if it has vanished automatically or you closed it using the cross(x) button. To get it back, just hover your cursor over the Inbox tab in left sidebar and click on the drop down menu. Then point at Inbox Type and click the ‘Try the tabs again’ option. That’s it.

Note: Apparently, Gmail has one stupid limitation which prevents you from getting the inbox-style tab bar again. What happens is, if you close the tabs bar twice then Gmail assumes that you don’t need it. Hence, on closing the inbox tabs bar for second time, the Try the tabs again option wont appear anymore and you cant get it.

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Google has finally added offline web access for its most popular services – Gmail, Docs and Calendar through offline web apps for Chrome browser. Now you can access all these 3 important services without Internet while travelling in a plane, train or hills.

Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.

Gmail offline is now available, just install the extension ‘Offline Google Mail’ to get it on Chrome. The offline Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today. To use Calendar or Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access.

The Gmail Offline app, currently in beta provides offline access, allows you to read, respond, search and archive mails when you’re offline. The app has a cool and streamlined user interface, offering extremely fast access to emails and other options. After first start-up, Gmail Offline will automatically synchronize messages and queued actions anytime Chrome is running and an Internet connection is available. You can switch between different accounts if you’ve added multiple Gmail accounts.

Screenshots: Preview of Offline Gmail Chrome App

(Click on the images to view in full size)

Note: Your mail syncs to your Google Chrome browser’s storage on the computer on which you install the app. This means that it could potentially be accessible by anyone with access to your browser. For your protection, make sure not to install Gmail Offline for Chrome on a public or shared computer.

To remove offline data from your browser’s storage, just follow the below steps:

1. Type chrome://settings/cookies into address bar and press enter
2. Search for mail.google.com
3. Hover over the search results and click the ‘X’  to delete them

Source: Official Gmail Blog

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Gmail by Google has an official and comprehensive list of Keyboard Shortcuts which makes it quite easier to navigate across Gmail and access the various functionalities. You can access all the Gmail and Google Reader Keyboard Shortcuts directly from within their web interface just by pressing the Shift + ? shortcut.

A page will pop-up as shown below. You need to Enable the Keyboard shortcuts to start using them right away inside Gmail, some might work with Google+ too. Keyboard shortcuts help you save time by allowing you to never take your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse. That’s a cool feature and many aren’t aware of this trick!

Click on the image to view in full size: (Check list on web)

Similarly, you can view the list of Official Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Reader. Just open Google Reader and hit Shift + ? to view them. (Check list on web)

Don’t forget to share this trick with your friends.

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Google recently added 2 new themes “Preview” and “Preview (Dense)” to Gmail Themes gallery which according to Google, gives a preview of the future of Gmail. These new themes offers a light, modern, and a much cleaner look that Gmail will be getting in few upcoming months. I found the Preview (Dense) theme far better than Preview because it utilizes less space and looks good when compared to the latter one.

Just today, I noticed that Gmail started showing a red link “Preview Gmail’s new look” that describes Google’s approach to email. Now, if you’ve switched to one the above discussed themes, then a yellow colored sponsored link floating at the bottom of your email list must have caught your attention. The ad is a sleek one but is more than enough to distract you and stain Gmail’s look. Unfortunately, neither Webmail AdBlocker nor AdBlock Plus were successful in hiding this Web Clip.

Don’t worry, one of our Google+ friend Manuel Feliciano has figured out a real easy way to get rid of that hideous ad from Gmail’s new theme. To remove the Ad clip, just go to Gmail Settings, tap on Web Clips, and Uncheck the box saying ‘Show my web clips above the Inbox’. That’s it, now click on Mail.

Voila! The ad will vanish without the need of using any add-on or userscript. This trick works with both themes, Preview as well as Preview (Dense).

Hope you found this post useful. Do share it if you liked it!

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Google+ has been introduced as a game changer for popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. In just few days, a lot of people specially techies have joined Google+ and the experience is simply awesome. Yes, it’s pretty addictive and interesting too because I’ve never seen such prompt and ongoing interaction before between the members in a circle and unknown people too.

We recently shared 20 Google+ Tips that surely powers user experience on Google Plus. Now, here is another useful tip about which most don’t know “Chatting with Friends in your circle on Google+”. Of course, you can chat with people included in your Gmail contacts but furthermore, Google+ allows you to chat with people added to your Circle.

To enable this feature, just hover your mouse cursor over Chat option in Google+ and click on the grey drop-down arrow. Select ‘Circles’ and then Choose the circles you want to chat with. You can select several Circles namely: Acquaintances, Family, Friends and Following. It’s better to add circles with people whom you know like family and friends.

Note: Chatting would be possible only when People (whom you have added for Chat) have also enabled the Chat feature. You will then be able to chat when they’re online and available for Chat.

Only enable chat for people who you trust because:

When you appear in someone’s chat list in Google+, it’s possible that person could discover your email address. While your email address won’t be displayed in the chat list in Google+, it is displayed in the chat lists of other Google products (Gmail and iGoogle, for instance).

Hope you found this tip handy, do share it with your friends on Google+.

Update – The feature to Chat with people in your circles was removed back in July but Google has now added it back. You can now chat with anyone in your circles who also have you in their circles. You can also choose Custom circles who can chat with you. Any new circles created by you are allowed to chat with you by default.

If you prefer NOT to chat with anyone in your circles on Google+, then just go to Chat settings (select Privacy settings from drop-down menu), select Custom and uncheck all the circles to hide Google+ users from appearing in your Chat list.Related Posts:

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Organising contacts on an Android phone seems easier as it offers a lot of options but things often get messed up when not done properly. So, here is our guide on:

How to Sort Duplicate Contacts, Import contacts to phone and Sync Android phone Contacts with your Gmail account -

Step 1 – Create a Backup of contacts and delete entire contacts on your Android phone. To do so, check our post “How to Delete Entire Contacts on your Android phone”.

Step 2 – Transfer the contacts backup (VCard file) to your computer. Now open your Gmail account and select Contacts. Click the ‘More actions’ drop-down menu, choose Import, browse to select the specific vCard file and Import it. (You can opt to add those imported contacts to a certain group to separate them from other contacts).

>> Assuming group here as ‘Friends’ for example.

Then open the Group (Friends) to which you imported the contacts. Hit the ‘More actions’ menu and choose “Find & merge duplicates…”. Gmail will now automatically remove all the duplicate entries from your contacts.

Step 3 – Syncing Android phone with your Gmail account

Sync is very effective and useful functionality because it automatically synchronizes the contacts to Gmail as you edit or add any new contact on your phone. The beauty of this sync is that this is permanent backup and you can restore contacts from here even if you delete them accidentally on your phone. So, no risk of losing your contacts!

To Sync Gmail contacts with Android, go to Settings > Accounts & sync and make sure ‘Background data’ and ‘Auto-sync’ options are enabled. Also, confirm that Sync is ON for your Gmail account and Sync Contacts option is enabled.

Next, open phone Contacts > hit menu button and select Display options. Under ‘Choose contacts to display’, tap on your Gmail account and tick mark the Friends Group.

Now wait for a while and you will see those Friends group contacts into your phonebook. There is also a nifty option to “Only display contacts that have phone numbers”. Select it if you like to keep your Contacts tidy only with necessary phone numbers.

Hope you found both these back to back Android posts useful. Don’t forget to share it with your friends on twitter and Facebook.

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